Cuatro Torres Business Area (CTBA) Digital Fountains

Cuatro Torres Business Area (CTBA) Digital Fountains

18/10/2017 / Posted by Lumiartecnia

The four towers represent the most modern and futuristic Madrid. Construction began in 2004 and was inaugurated in late 2008 and early 2009. The official name of the complex is Cuatro Torres Business Area (CTBA).
The towers are located where the old Real Madrid Sports City was. Currently the area has open spaces, gardens and two twin sets of dry deck Digital water fountains and architectural fountains, illuminated at night with RGB LED lights, engineered by Lumiartecnia Internacional.

The Cuatro Torres Digital Water Fountains are the largest walkable fountains in the capital. They have become an iconic urban landscape of Madrid as a XXI century city.

The new economic heart of the city is made up of four skyscrapers, with a height of over 200 meters high, and a future international convention center. These five pieces, with their own architectural personality of extraordinary dimensions in relation to its environment, articulate and determine the urban environment of the new Castellana avenue.

The four towers are the four tallest skyscrapers in Spain today. One by one:

Sacyr Vallehermoso Tower
Sacyr Vallehermoso Tower is the only one of the four towers built by Spanish architects: Carlos Rubio Carvajal and Enrique Alvarez-Sala Walter. It has a height of 236 meters.
This tower is one of the most luxurious hotels in Madrid, Eurostars Madrid Tower. The hotel goes up to the 31st floor, taking the top two floors a luxurious panoramic restaurant.

The digital water fountains are at the foot of this tower. There are two twin squares in front of the Eurostars Madrid Tower hotel.

The main fountain is shaped by 61 vertical jets using LI-5066 nozzles, including levelers LI-A1101 to perfectly position in vertical these nozzles.

There are 16 more vertical jets, arranged in couples, in a swallow pond placed closer to the hotel.

Close up to this fountain showing LI-5066 Nozzles positioned with LI-A1101 levelers and LI-3200 underwater RGB Lights with DMX control.

Closer to Castellana avenue, two long ponds contain 21 cascade jets each, disposed in groups of three water jets, separated by black marble square flowerpots.

22 Spray clouds at ground level, shaped with groups of 9 LI-4051 nozzles, complete the water scenes of these digital walkable fountains.

This fountain complex was constructed and installed by IMES and Engineered by Lumiartecnia Internacional. The fountains cover two areas of 1.000 m², with a total power of 154 KW, 400 Nozzles and 760 LI-3200 RGB LED lights.

At night the fountain is lighted with muticolored RGB LED lights with DMX Control, allowing to perfectly illuminate all water jets independently from each other. This fountain was a pioneer in the introduction of this type of lighting in Madrid and up to the date continues to be the largest of this type in the city with more than 700 LED lights.

The LED lights are waterproof IP-68 lighting the vertical jets that rise over 6 meters high while developing sequences and spectacular water games.

These LI-3200 lights can also be placed at ground level with a special accessory that allows to integrate them in the existing pavement.

The digital fountain control is performed by using our Controlidor software, LI-A1530 single-phase inverters and LI-A1540 DMX interface converter. The fountain jets continually evolve in dynamic shapes, changing in height and jet numbers, creating amazing water displays, magically lighted with fantasy colors at night.

This project has become an international reference for urban architects who seek to enhance the beauty of city landscapes with XXI century fountain technology.

Caja Madrid Tower
Caja Madrid Tower is the tallest building in Spain with 250 meters high. Besides being the tallest of the four, this work of Norman Foster is the building of the four that has a more amazing architecture. Its most characteristic feature is the distribution of plants into three distinct groups, these are visible on the facade like big boxes on a shelf.

Crystal Tower
Designed by Iñigo Ortiz, Enrique Leon and Cesar Pelli, (the architect of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur) is 249 meters high with 52 floors (47 and 5 office facilities). This great office skyscraper breaks the rectangular geometry with facades and roof with different slopes, following the morphology of an Egyptian obelisk. This tower is dedicated exclusively to offices, and its distinguishing features include a botanical garden built on the roof of the building.

Espacio Tower
With over 230 meters high and 57 floors, Space Tower is a building to house offices of major companies and several embassies. Work of the New York architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Space Tower, the skyscraper lowest of the four that form the Cuatro Torres Business Area, was the first to reach its final height. Their facades start with square shape and as altitude increases, the facades truncate to a helical shape, with a curve that follows the function y = cosx.

International Convention Center of Madrid

The team of architects Emilio Tuñon, Luis Moreno Mansilla and Matilde Peralta del Amo are responsible for building the new CICM, after emerging winners of the international contest with the proposal “Madrid, where the sun does not set”. This modern convention center, the third of the capital Madrid, will be at the center of the financial and business action of Madrid’s S.XXI, ie, at the foot of skyscrapers Cuatro Torres Business Area.

The new convention center is set with a circular morphology and large openings to east and west, which facilitate the entry of natural light into the complex, which makes us remember a great sun light than a traditional building forms. The reference to the solar body is not free, because their facades are designed as large solar discs drilled and coated with LEDs lights representing a map of the constellations in the sky, and the geographical and political land evoke the future project that are building the countries forming the constellation of the European Union. In addition to the entry of natural light, the project also has prevailed in its interior layout that optimizes communication between the different spaces needed in a complex of these features as well as the need to create a compact center that would release the immediate urban environment construction and dedicate it to green. Note the capacity of the main auditorium, with a capacity of 3,500 seats, can be extended to 5000.

This project has been canceled due to the economic crisis Spain is suffering. Hopefully someday it will become a reality too.